Snettisham: 71 years of visits and a hard look at the RSPB

I recently took a trip down memory lane to the Norfolk coast – Snettisham to be exact. My forebears have been part of this stretch of coast for generations and I have visited it for 71 years.

A broken concrete road winds between rows of caravans and beach huts to end up at the RSPB reserve, a beautiful spot that always conjures a wonderfully warm feeling of being at home. As a small boy I accompanied my father and grandfather here on wildfowling trips before it became an RSPB reserve. Springs and summers were spent cockling, collecting samphire, eel fishing and bird-nesting – not ashamed to admit it.

I always park my modest campervan in the space that says “permit holders only”, with vast mudflats in front and lakes called the backwaters behind. Separated from the sea by shingle banks, the backwaters are old gravel workings that later flooded. In the big flood of 1953 some 300 people perished when moon, tides and wind all came together, causing a dreadful rising tide along the east coast.

It is a bird reserve now, but beyond some excellent viewing hides I see little of what the RSPB has done in the area. Yes, there are fenced no-go areas, essential for ground-nesting birds, but what of actual bird management? I wonder, for example, what would have taken place were the backwaters in private hands. Perhaps it may help to look at how the numbers have changed as I remember them.

How the bird numbers have changed at Snettisham

On the plus side it was wonderful to see spoonbills and avocets, neither of which was evident when I was a boy. There appeared to be good numbers of godwits and shelduck (always there), and I did see oystercatchers and ringed plovers, again always there. I cannot make a comparison on numbers and rose-tinted glasses are often worn, but I do feel that numbers of the last two may well be down – not surprising, as I suspect they are down everywhere.

What was evident is that these precious backwaters with their tiny islands had nothing like the number of terns that there once was. As a very young boy I remember swimming out to look at the island nests and (hang me) get an egg. There were huge numbers and I feared that their diving would scalp me.

Going back a long way, my great-grandfather was a keeper on the adjoining Ken Hill estate. I believe that at one time he was asked by a Colonel Cresswell to monitor tern numbers along that coastline. It came about because the fishermen were blaming a drop in flatfish stocks on the enormous population of terns taking the fry. A report at the time stated that neither the birds of the air nor beasts of the land (including man) could ever influence the fecundity of the sea. Little did they know what lay ahead.

Instead of terns there were large numbers of Egyptian geese, greylags and cormorants, none of which I remember seeing in summers of old. In private hands the Egyptian geese and greylags would be culled, the former under licence, and the cormorants’ island takeover dissuaded. More floating islands should be created and help given to those species in need at the expense of those that are not. Egyptian geese should simply not be present.

A predator imbalance the RSPB now acknowledges

What I found refreshing was an information poster about ringed plover numbers decreasing, the RSPB putting the cause down to disturbance (human) and predation. I am genuinely pleased that it acknowledges the problems of a predator imbalance. It’s such a shame that this organisation could not work more closely with keepers and find a common path for predator control, but frankly it is hardly surprising.

Why release density is the argument we cannot dodge

An old friend contacted me recently asking what I thought of the shoot next to him releasing 90,000 partridges on fewer than 3,000 acres with some 85 days of shooting sold. I think he knows what I think of it, and we all know what the RSPB thinks of it. This high density of release is by no means an isolated case. It is ecologically damaging and somehow we have to remove such elements.

Our critics will not look at the well-keepered shoot in balance with ecology and conservation. Why would they? So when there is a call for all shoots to be licensed, perhaps it is born of necessity and perhaps there should be compulsory limitations placed on released numbers. We seem unable to control things voluntarily.

David Whitby has 46 years’ experience in deer management and gamekeeping.